Product Details

• Actors: Matthew Kimbrough, Leelee Sobieski, Steve Zahn, Paul Walker, Jessica Bowman
• Directors: John Dahl
• Writers: J.J. Abrams, Clay Tarver
• Producers: Arnon Milchan, Bridget Johnson, Chris Moore, J.J. Abrams, Jeffrey Downer
• Format: Color, NTSC, Widescreen
• Language: English (Dolby Surround), French (Dolby Surround), Spanish (Dolby Surround)
• Subtitles: English, Spanish
• Dubbed: English, French, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: 20th Century Fox
• DVD Release Date: March 12, 2002
• Run Time: 97 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (271 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0002WT4OE
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #23,018 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• Learn more about "Joy Ride (Special Edition)" on IMDb

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Joy Ride follows the familiar conventions of road-movie thrillers with enough vitality to make everything old seem new again. A confirmed master of neo-noir suspense, director John Dahl (Red Rock West, The Last Seduction) sets a consistent tone of humor and horror as Lewis (Paul Walker) and his black-sheep brother Fuller (Steve Zahn) drive from Salt Lake City to pick up Lewis's friend Venna (Leelee Sobieski) in Boulder, Colorado. En route, they play a practical joke via CB radio, inviting vengeful terror as an unseen trucker (voiced with exquisite menace by Silence of the Lambs villain Ted Levine) pursues them with relentless, homicidal aggression. Inevitable comparisons to Steven Spielberg's Duel fail to appreciate Dahl's unique talent for energizing B-movie formulas while injecting his own brand of rib-tickling excitement. While Zahn deserves extra credit in his first top-billed role, Joy Ride wins a badge of honor for everyone involved. --Jeff Shannon

Product Description

It's all fun and games whene two brothers (Paul Walker and Steve Zahn) take off cross-country to bring home a pretty college friend (Leelee Sobieski). But the jokes end when a prank backfires and they find themselves stalked by a vengeful trucker who won't give up his relentless chase until somebody pays with their life.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 48 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars One ride you should not miss! October 5, 2001

By Jason Cheng

I'm happy to report that Joy Ride is NOT just another teen slasher movie, nor is it a Scream clone, instead, it is one of the better thriller/horror film that came out of Hollywood recently. The Thomas brothers while traveling towards New Jersey decided to pull a prank on a stranger by using a CB radio, posing as a female they agreed to a midnight rendezvous with a trucker who calls himself 'Rusty Nail.' Hoping to get a good laugh, the brothers found instead that the joke is on them as they flees from the psychotic stranger out for revenge.

What makes Joy Ride scary is its believability, this kind of thing can actually happen, probably not to the extreme as portrayed in the film, but people do play jokes on each other constantly, and some do get carried away. Composed of a relatively young cast, Steve Zahn (Fuller Thomas,) Paul Walker (Lewis Thomas) and Leelee Sobieski (Venna) did a good job keeping the audiences attention glued to the screen, the pacing was actually well done because there was not a dull moment on this road trip. Unfortunately, with this genre there is usually little character development, which is true for Joy Ride, but it isn't necessarily a bad thing here.

Joy Ride was an entertaining and short movie that doesn't take itself too seriously, the direction was tight and the script was decent, it's a great film for adults and teenager alike. Just remember, it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt, and do unto others as you would have them done to you.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars "Duel" For The Millenium July 16, 2006

By Tony Rome

Format:DVD

In "Joy Ride", the Director John Dahl (Last Seduction, Red Rock West, Rounders)pounds you right from the beginning and never lets up.

It's "Duel" updated for the millenium and for a contemporary audience.

Two brothers, Paul Walker (Fast and The Furious) and Steve Zahn (Shattered Glass) take a road trip to pick up Walker's college girlfriend (Leelee Sobieski).

Using a CB radio, they play a practical joke on a trucker who turns out to be the biggest movie big rig psycho since Rutger Hauer planted a finger in C.Thomas Howell's french fries.

What the trucker, whose CB handle is "Rusty Nail" does to exact revenge keeps the audience on edge for the film's 97 minutes.

(Note: one of the sequences in the chillingly directed and edited climax cribs gleefully from "Silence of the Lambs")

Dahl pulls of the the difficult challenge of blending scares with a few laughs with little effort..he's a wildly talented director with a taste for hip, off beat material.

Dahl directs from a script by JJ Abrams ("Lost") and Clay Tarver

The voice of "Rusty Nail" is supplied by the great Ted Levine.

Note: not long before "Joy Ride" began shooting, the studio decided it wanted a different ending, supposedly a few alternate endings were shot, one of which, running 29 minutes, is included on the DVD which also includes Eric Roberts vocal audition as Rusty Nail...Roberts obviously lost the gig to Levine.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars For Good Creepy Fun Give Joy Ride a Try March 14, 2005

By David Girod VINE™ VOICE

Format:DVD

I am surprised at some of the negative reviews posted here?! I guess some of these folks thought they were taking home "Hamlet" and got "Joy Ride" by mistake??? Sure there isn't much character development, sure you may have seen this premise before, and yes "Joy Ride" is a B-Movie.....and it's a great one! I don't know what more you could ask for with a movie like "Joy Ride", it gave me plenty of chills, and had me really rooting for the two brothers who get on the wrong side of a homicidal truck driver. "Joy Ride" may resemble "Duel", "Breakdown", "Highwaymen" or any one of a hundred thriller "road" movies, but the story is definately edge-of-your-seat fun, and worth adding to your collection if you are a horror fan. Within the first 10 minutes you get sucked into this thriller and it does not let go. Ted Levine is perfect as Rusty Nail (you forget how menacing he can be after watching him as Stottlemeyer on "Monk"), and if Levine's voice oozing through the cb radio doesn't give you goosebumps, you should really go have your blood pressure checked! "Joy Ride" is the perfect movie to watch late at night while you cower under the blankets.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars ROAD KILL June 30, 2002

By Mr. N. Carnegie

Format:DVD

Directed by John Dahl, previously best known for Red Rock West and The Last Seduction (the movie that launched Linda Fiorentino's career), the ironically titled Joy ride is very much a homage to the seventies Spielberg movie Duel but rather than being just a cheap rip-off Joy Ride is in fact a very entertaining, genuinely scary edge of the seat ride, which proves that you don't need a big budget to make great movies.

THE PLOT: The film's instantly likeable hero, Lewis, played by Paul Walker (The Fast and The Furious) a scholarship student at Berkeley, buys a battered 1971 car so he can pick up Venna (Leelee Sobieski), who he has a major crush for, from the University of Colorado and drive her to the East Coast for summer vacation. However, on the way he unexpectedly has to pick up his irresponsible older brother Fuller (the always excellent Steve Zahn) who's in a Salt Lake City jail on a drunk-and-disorderly charge. During the journey Fuller buys a cheap CB radio and involves Lewis in an unpleasant practical joke at the expense of a truck driver with the CB handle 'Rusty Nail' but they find themselves in fear for their lives when old Rusty turns out to be a psychopath who takes a violent dislike to them. From then on, they themselves become the objects of the unseen Rusty Nail's revenge. After several hair-raising encounters, they resolve not to tell Venna of their adventures when they pick her up at the clean, well-lit Colorado campus.

It would be easy to criticise Joy Ride (known as Road kill in the UK). Its premise is hardly original and its reliance on a CB radio as a plot device harks back to the seventies, rather than the present day when everybody (except in this movie) has a cell phone.... However, Joy Ride is actually a stunning success due to its faultless direction, which creates Hitchcock like suspense and provides many heart stopping moments. The script is excellent too combining and balancing humour and horror in equal measures, often hinting at violence that is not actually seen and providing nervous moments of humour whilst avoiding corniness. As for the three leads they are perfectly cast with Paul Walker, minus the blonde beach boy locks he sported in The Fast and the Furious, making a good fist of the part of the boy from the wrong side of the tracks in love with the girl from the right side of the tracks played by the equally impressive Leelee Sobieski (Deep Impact). Steve Zahn (Out of Sight) as the misfit brother Fuller is also excellent and he steals many of the scenes with witty one-liners but ultimately this is a movie whose strength lies in the sum of all its parts. Cheaply made it shows that its not big budgets that make great movies its talent and imagination. Here's hoping there's a sequel! Four stars, well merited. **** Read more ›